Four Makeup Looks: From Minimal To Dramatic

20 July, 2017

For the first time on my blog I am sharing with you a few looks that I created on a friend. I tried to cover four styles that I love: the classic smokey, the colorful and bright, the ethereal, and the edgy/editorial. In the end, it was fun to play around with a canvas that was not my own.

I have always loved all those clean, glowy, fresh looks where all that pops is the skin's luminosity. For a fresh appearance I added a rosy hue to the cheeks using the draping technique. Also, a wash of color to the lids, a gradient lip to make them appear sweet, and a highlighter with a pink tone in it. Brows and lashes were kept very minimal and only defined with light brown products.

The Smokey Eye look is as classic as a red lip. My friend has beautiful green eyes and I wanted them to stand out as much a possible, so instead of going for a dark and gloomy smokey eye, I used coppery shades. I tied the whole look together with red cheeks and a mix of lipsticks. Since it's all quite dramatic, I felt the need to bring back light to her face. I used a luminous base and bronzer to give the skin a dewy finish and topped the high points with gold highlighter.

To create this look I worked over the previous makeup, just layering more products to create more dimension and added the bright elements. Even though the lips are quite a statement, I still wanted more drama on the eyes, which ended up as a glitter liner. This time I switched to a pink/purple hue on the eyeshadow, the lip topper, and the highlighter.

After working with so much highlight and colors, I decided that the last look was going to be the simplest. The skin was the total opposite to the others: a more matte finish, very sculpted cheekbones, and a neutral blush (which could have been skipped). I wanted all the drama on the eyes and brows, creating a deconstructed liner and brows with thick strokes as if they were the hairs. To create a slight contrast between both lines I used black and purple respectively.